Recent advances in cancer immunotherapy

Cancer immunotherapy represents a major advance in the cure of cancer following the dramatic advancements in the development and refinement of chemotherapies and radiotherapies. In the recent decades, together with the development of early diagnostic techniques, immunotherapy has significantly contributed to improving the survival of cancer patients. The immune-checkpoint blockade agents have been proven effective in a significant fraction of standard therapy refractory patients. Importantly, recent advances are providing alternative immunotherapeutic tools that could help overcome their limitations. In this mini review, we provide an overview on the main steps of the discovery of classic immune-checkpoint blockade agents and summarise the most recent development of novel immunotherapeutic strategies, such as tumour antigens, bispecific antibodies and TCR-engineered T cells.

Dynamic Collaborations for the Development of Immune Checkpoint Blockade Agents

We studied the overview of drug discovery and development to understand the recent trends and potential success factors of interorganizational collaboration by reviewing 1204 transactions performed until 2019 for 107 anticancer drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from 1999 to 2018. Immune checkpoint blockade was found to be a significantly active area in interorganizational transactions, especially the number of alliances, compared with other mechanisms of action of small molecules and biologics for cancer treatment. Furthermore, the analysis of pembrolizumab and nivolumab showed that the number of approved indications for these two drugs has been rapidly expanding since their first approval in 2014. Examination of the acquisitions and alliances regarding pembrolizumab and nivolumab showed that many combination partners were developed by US-based biotechnology or start-up companies, the majority of which were biologics. These findings suggest that immune checkpoint blockade is a paradigm for cancer treatment, resulting in huge product sales and continuous indication expansion. Additionally, interorganizational collaboration, especially trial collaboration, is a strategic approach for the development of immune checkpoint blockade agents. The translation of these empirical practices to new drug candidates is expected for the research and development of innovative drugs in the future.